Stronger together? The homophily trap in networks

Abstract

While homophily -- the tendency to link with similar others -- may nurture a sense of belonging and shared values, it can also hinder diversity and widen inequalities. Here, we unravel this trade-off analytically, revealing homophily traps for minority groups: scenarios where increased homophilic interaction among minorities negatively affects their structural opportunities within a network. We demonstrate that homophily traps arise when minority size falls below 25% of a network, at which point homophily comes at the expense of lower structural visibility for the minority group. Our work reveals that social groups require a critical size to benefit from homophily without incurring structural costs, providing insights into core processes underlying the emergence of group inequality in networks.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: The homophily trap: when favoring intra-group ties incurs structural costs.(a, b) The impact of higher minority homophily on degree gap depends on group size. (c) When the minority size is 30% of the network, higher minority homophily benefits the group; at 20%, however, it becomes detrimental to the group. (d) We examine this impact across different minority sizes and majority homophily values, finding that with larger minority groups, the impact of homophily shifts from increasing to decreasing the gap. (e) This shift occurs at a critical size, beyond which homophilic interaction helps the connectivity of the minority group. In large networks, scenarios of homophily trap occur when a group is smaller than 25%, where favoring intra-group ties incurs reduced connectivity. In all plots, dots represent simulation results for networks with 1000 nodes, while curves are based on analytical formulations.